Zülfü Livaneli


Ömer Zülfü Livanelioğlu, better known as Zülfü Livaneli, is a Turkish musician, author, poet, and politician.
Livaneli is known for his novels that interweave diverse social and historical backgrounds, figures, and incidents, such as in Bliss which won the Barnes & Noble's Discovery of Great New Writers Award in 2006, and in his Serenade for Nadia, Leyla's House, and My Brother's Story, which were all translated into 37 languages and won numerous Turkish and International literary awards. His novels have been turned into theatrical films, stage plays, and operas.
Livaneli was imprisoned several times during the 1971 Turkish coup d'état because of his political views and had to leave Turkey in 1972 and went on exile. He lived in Stockholm, Paris, Athens, and New York where he met and collaborated with artists and intellectuals such as Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, James Baldwin, and Peter Ustinov among others. Livaneli returned to Turkey in 1984.
His works and cultural and political activities and contributions to world peace were recognized by UNESCO in 1995 when he was appointed Goodwill Ambassador to UNESCO—a post. He quit this UNESCO post in 2016 to protest the Turkish State's deliberate destruction of the historic Kurdish Old Town of Diyarbakir. He served a term in the Turkish Parliament as well as in the Council of Europe.
Livaneli is a writer as he is as a poet and a songwriter, cultural and political activist. Although he first became known for his contemporary music, Livaneli turned his focus to writing, in the last decades, when he realized that literature was closer to his heart. His first collection of short stories, A Child in Purgatory, published in 1978 was turned into a movie by Swedish and German TV. He is also a prominent social-democrat politician and was a member of the Turkish parliament for one term. Livaneli's novels have been turned into theatrical movies, stage plays, and operas.
Livaneli has composed some three hundred songs, a rhapsody recorded by London Symphony Orchestra–, and a ballet. His compositions have reached cult status nationwide and have been performed by artists such as Joan Baez, Maria Farantouri, María del Mar Bonet, Udo Lindenberg, Haris Alexiou, Jocelyn B. Smith, and Kate Westbrook. He has also written five plays and thirty film soundtracks. Among these soundtracks are the soundtrack for "Yol", directed by Yilmaz Güney and winner of the Golden Palm in Cannes Film Festival, "The Herd", directed by Yılmaz Güney and Zeki Öktem, and "Shirin's Wedding" by German director Helma Sanders-Brahms. He has produced albums and performed with Mikis Theodorakis and Maria Farantouri, and he has also collaborated with Manos Hatzidakis, Giora Feidman, Inti-Illimani and Ángel Parra. His 1997 Ankara concert was attended by no less than 500 thousand people. In 2010, he sang 'Mothers of The Disappeared' with Bono at U2's concert in Istanbul, Turkey, which was U2's first-ever concert in Istanbul. Livaneli has been distinguished with the awards Best Album of the Year, the Edison Award, and Best Album of the Year, and the "Premio Luigi Tenco" Best Songwriter Award, San Remo, Italy, in 1999, among others.

Personal life

Livaneli's real name is Ömer Zülfü Livanelioğlu. His father was a judge and later president of the Turkish Supreme Court. He has four brothers and a sister. His mother died at the age of 38, when he was 20, and his father later remarried. His wife's name is Ülker and his daughter's name is Aylin; she was born in Ankara, Turkey. Ülker is a translator.
In March 2020, Livaneli announced that he and his wife had become infected with coronavirus during their visit to New York in February during the COVID-19 pandemic. He further stated that after receiving treatment both of them had fully recovered and were quarantined in Turkey.

First album and rise to fame

Livaneli was trying to go to Europe because he had gone to jail two times. For his first album, he didn't use his current name, Zülfü Livaneli. Instead, he used the name "Ozanoglu". Yet he did not get to the point where he wanted to be, therefore, he started using his current name, Zülfü Livaneli, on his new album, Chants Révolutionnaires Turcs in 1971 or 1973. When he was in Europe, his brother Ferhat informed him about how his songs were being sung by everyone in Turkey while they were protesting the government. Livaneli then made an album called Nazim Türküsü. The album turned the well renowned poet Nâzım Hikmet's poems to music and it became and stayed at the top hit on albums album for 48 weeks.
In 1986, the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis met Livaneli. They then proceeded to make an album called Güneş Topla Benim İçin. After when the album was released in Turkey it was one of works at the peak of the Turkish music market. At that time Livaneli met Ahmet Kaya which was another folk singer. 1980s were the years Livaneli reached his first peak. The London Orchestra performed with Livaneli in 1998, and in 1999, UNESCO assisted Livaneli on the release of that album.

Political life

Apart from his remarkable career as an author and poet, Livaneli was highly influential in Turkish politics over the last thirty years. In the 2002 Turkish elections, Livaneli was elected to the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi as a Deputy for Istanbul for the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. Livaneli resigned from the CHP in early 2005, however, in protest at "CHP's non-democratic and authoritarian system of politics",
During his political career in Ankara, Livaneli presented a legislative proposal for amending Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. The amendment proposed that the concept of "Turkishness" should be replaced with that of the "Turkish nation" which would put an emphasis on the concept of "nation" which, as formulated by the Republic, unites under its umbrella people of different origins. With this amendment, there would no more be a stress on the notion of Turkish race.
Besides this, in 2006 he presented a proposal to the National Assembly demanding that a commission be established in order to investigate the reasons for increasing violence and fanaticism among the youth; his proposal was accepted.
Following his 2005 resignation from the party membership, Livaneli continued in his position in the Grand National Assembly as an independent until the end of that term. He did not take part in the 2007 Turkish elections and appears politically inactive. He has since concentrated on his art and books.
Livaneli was a daily contributor as a columnist in the newspapers Sabah, Vatan, and Milliyet.

Films

Livaneli directed four feature films: Iron Earth, Copper Sky, Mist, Shahmaran and Veda. His film Iron Earth, Copper Sky was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Veda that based on the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the last film written and directed by Zülfü Livaneli.
One of the most acclaimed Turkish films of the decade – and one of the first narrative films to tackle the highly charged subject of honor killings – Bliss was originally adopted from Livaneli's best-seller novel. The film, reviewed by New York Times as a consistently gripping, visually intoxicating film and standing as a landmark of contemporary Turkish cinema.

Books